The Liberty Times Editorial: Ma wants Chinese colonialism

In the 19th century, a weak and humiliated China suffered under the occupation of Great Britain, France and other imperialist states. Historically speaking, this is of course an injustice committed against China.

However, history often swings back and forth, and while ceding Hong Kong to Great Britain was a humiliation to China, the territory prospered and developed under the British far surpassing any Chinese city.

This does not apply only to Hong Kong. To this day, any part of China once occupied by a foreign power remains more developed than other parts of China. It is not very surprising that people sometimes jokingly say that China’s biggest humiliation was not the cession of Hong Kong to Great Britain, but rather that the British turned Hong Kong into the pearl of the Far East. Ironically, this saying has been verified over and over again by Hong Kong’s regression over the past 16 years.

Hong Kongers have continued to protest annually on June 4 and July 1 against the brainwashing going on in their educational system, the delayed introduction of universal elections and their puppet government.

There is repeated evidence that more and more Hong Kongers are leaving their colonial mindset behind in search of an identity of their own. At the July 1 demonstration this year some people held up the colonial British flag.

Though they do not long for a return to the colonial era, their opposition to China’s authoritarian rule is evident.

At the same time, Ma and his cohorts, who are in fact in charge of a sovereign state, are inviting Chinese colonialism.

From “one China, different interpretations” and “one country, two areas” to the view that the relationship between Taiwan and China is not a relationship between countries, they are unreservedly, accepting the idea that even Hong Kongers reject: “Taiwan is part of China’s sacred territory.”